Hanefi

   The Hanefi school of jurisprudence is the largest of the four recognized schools of law in Sunni Islam. It was established in Iraq under Abbasid patronage and drew heavily on consensus and judicial reasoning, as well as the Koran and the sunnah. Since the establishment of the Ottoman Empire's authority in eastern Anatolia and Mesopotamia in the 16th century, most Sunni Muslim Turks have been of the Hanefite school, while Kurds who were Sunni Muslim remained adherents of the Shafii jurisprudence, which had been predominant in the region earlier.

   The Shafii school was established during the ninth century in Egypt as a synthesis of the Hanefi and Maliki schools, but with greater stress on analogy. In Kurdistan, the Shafii school has been less deferential to state authority than the Hanefi school. Most observers, however, conclude that this dichotomy between the Hanefi and Shafii schools is not very important in understanding the Kurdish issue.